Mobile Social Address Book - History

History

Mobile social address books began appearing in 2007 as a parallel social trend to the emergence of Internet-based social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, establishing a new paradigm for interpersonal contact and communication. Mobile social address books sought to bring the connectivity of social networking to the in-the-moment experience of the mobile phone. Users can easily exchange contact information regardless of their handset, mobile carrier, or social networking application they use.

Examples of emerging companies providing technology to support mobile social address books include: PicDial (which dynamically augments the existing address book with pictures and status from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, integrates with the call screen so during every call you see the latest picture and status of whoever is calling. It is a network address book so everything can be managed from Windows or Mac as well and lastly you can also set your one callerID picture and status for your friends to see when you call them) FusionOne (whose backup and synchronization solutions lets users easily transfer and update mobile content, including contact information, among different devices); Loopt (whose Loopt service provides a social compass alerting users when friends are near); OnePIN (whose CallerXchange person-to-person contact exchange service lets users share contact info with one click on the mobile phone); and VoxMobili (whose Phone Backup and Synchronized Address Book solutions let users safeguard and synchronize their contact information among different devices).